Word: bridgeless
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Dates: during 1945-1945
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...Silk. On the roads below the roaring air fleet, guns, trucks and marching men were raising dust clouds. Farther ahead were smudges of black smoke where heavy bombers were still beating up the target area. Suddenly, out of the smoke, the now bridgeless Rhine appeared, flowing placidly. In the lead transports gum-chewing paratroops were tense. From the jumpmaster in each plane came a curt command: "Stand up!" Then, "Hook up! . . . Stand in the door! . . . Go!" They went tumbling out, 15 men in ten seconds...
...which last week roared into its fourth week without a single day's interruption. Field Marshal von Rundstedt must have been thrown badly off balance. He had no doubt counted on plenty of time to regroup his forces, while Eisenhower prepared for the "naval operation" of crossing a bridgeless Rhine...
Thus for the immediate future the attackers faced the prospect of crossing a bridgeless river. The deep, swift-running Rhine was 380 yards wide at Cologne, 450 at Duisburg. Months ago Eisenhower had said that for the Germans to retreat across a bridgeless Rhine would be almost a "naval operation." It would be no less so for the Allies to advance across it. Time would be needed to bring up huge quantities of assault boats, pontoons, bridging materials - not to mention the artillery necessary to cover a crossing in real force. In the midst of ebullient talk about crossing immediately...
...people. They watched with detached wonder when the U.S. Army laid a gasoline pipeline from the Normandy beachhead to Paris. Then an idea galvanized them into action: if gas can flow through a six-inch pipe, why not wine? Last week Frenchmen laid their own pipeline. Across the practically bridgeless Loire River it will bring wine from southern France to break a drought that has been desiccating Paris and northern France...
...Principle 2 Vandenberg could report: all rail bridges on lines leading to the bulge were down and were being kept down by repeated attacks. Only one main bridge still stood in the Belgian salient. Back of it the bombers had created a bridgeless arc extending from Cologne to the Moselle River. The.German railheads were pushed steadily back by continued attack. But the bridges over the Rhine were left standing. "Ike" Eisenhower apparently still believed that the Germans would commit all they had to a battle west of the Rhine (TIME...